Today's News Roundup

Shares of investment bank Lehman Brothers dropped 2.8 percent during after-market trading in New York yesterday to $36.30. The bank plans to raise $3 billion in capital to quell fears that it is volatile. According to Reuters, the price-per-share dropped because “it could result in more shares being issued.”

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has come out strongly against Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson plans to revamp governmental oversight of the country’s financial boards, saying it would result in "an overly homogenized, less effective, and less competitive model" of supervision.

UBS chairman Marcel Ospel announced his resignation today, the same day the Swiss bank said that it anticipates first-quarter 2008 write-downs of about $18 million. Said Dirk Becker, an analyst at London’s Kepler Equities, "This is slightly higher than consensus expectations, though no great surprise as every one suspected there were multibillion dollar losses in the pipeline.”

National Hydrogen Association's technology director, Patrick Serfass, says in a video clip on TheStreet that hydrogen cells used as an eco-friendly hydrogen source may boost platinum sales, especially for use as fuel cells in automobiles.

Morgan Stanley and Oliver Wyman wrote in a joint report that the banking sector “is facing the most severe investment banking crisis in 30 years. Global securities markets are in the midst of profound cyclical and structural change.”

Microsoft has no plans to up the $44.6 billion offer it made for Yahoo two months ago. Said an unnamed industry insider, "Why would Microsoft bid against themselves? The company sees no reason to bid against itself.”

As 2:30 p.m. EDT, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.6 percent and the Nasdaq up 2.8 percent,  “on optimism that banks may have weathered the worse of the subprime credit crisis,” Word that the manufacturing sector fared better in March than it did in February helped improve investor confidence.

Barack Obama said while campaigning in Pennsylvania that John McCain does not have a clear plan for Iraq, accusing him of “clinging to the policies of the past.”

David Paul Kuhn of Politico writes that Hillary Clinton’s only hope of snaring the Democratic presidential nomination rests on whether or not she can sway the 25 delegates appointed to the 169-member Credentials Committee by DNC chair Howard Dean in her favor. Said a senior adviser to the candidate, "If the formal process of seating a delegation cannot be resolved, those 25 will be important."

In prepared remarks for her upcoming speech at a Pennsylvania AFL-CIO meeting, Hillary Clinton compares herself to movie hero Rocky Balboa: “When it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up. And neither do the American people."

Only about half of students in public schools in 17 of the 50 largest cities in America graduate, according to a report issued by America’s Promise Alliance, an association of non-profit groups and corporations. The national on-time graduation rate is about 70 percent.

Gregg Bergersen, a weapons analyst for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, pleaded guilty to giving classified information about U.S. and Taiwanese military relations to New Orleans-based businessman Kuo Tai, who passed on the data to Chinese spies. Bergersen faces up to 10 years in prison.

Oil executives defended their companies at a House hearing today, called because of high oil prices. The executives sought “the right to drill in off-limits areas” and criticized “legislation in Congress to take away $18 billion in tax breaks from oil companies to subsidize renewable-energy investments.”

A weapons analyst for the U.S. Defense Department pleaded guilty today “to delivering classified information about U.S. and Taiwanese military relations to a New Orleans furniture salesman who turned out to be working with the Chinese government,” the Associated Press reports. He could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

In Ukraine on Tuesday, President Bush expressed his support for Ukraine and Georgia’s bid to join NATO, despite “Russian opposition and French and German objections,” USA Today reports. The NATO summit will begin tomorrow.

Turkey’s Constitutional Court, the country’s highest-ranking judicial body, agreed to contemplate prosecuting a case that would effectively ban the AK Parti, the Islamist-leaning majority party currently in power, because of its “anti-secular activities.”

Results from Zimbabwe’s election on Saturday continue to trickle in. In the presidential race the main opposition group, Movement for Democratic Change, has 49 percent of the vote, according to officially published results. A 50 percent vote is necessary to avoid a run-off.

Ethnic Serbian police officers in Kosovo have felt pressure to quit since the country’s independence. Lt. Besim Hoti, a spokesperson for the Kosovo Police Service, says “There was a new reality that was created after Feb. 17 [that] brought about a new kind of tension.”

Opposition parties in Zimbabwe claim that they are close to reaching a deal “for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to step down,” according to the BBC. Mugabe is expected to address the country on national television. The incumbent president has not appeared in public since Saturday's election.